Weird News of the World Thread - Part 2

[blksuperman2]

Cuba Gooding JR feel off after he won an Oscar too. Weird

 

[Teelie]

One of my professors said that your stomach converts something in the sweetener into what's more or less a form of pesticide.

Which is both meaningless and probably misleading. Pesticide can be something as simple as borax or something more dangerous like DDT.

When you drink alcohol your liver breaks it down into something used in paint thinner. That doesn't make it paint thinner.

 

[BrollySupersj]

Yep! If anything he should be more empathatic.

You sound like one of those people who after they quit smoking looks down on everyone else who still does.

I guess it sounded obnoxious. Didn't mean to be. I don't look down on anyone drinking soda. I more or less feel a sense of "nah man, try drinking water instead."

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Teen Who Proposed Laser Cat Yearbook Photo Commits Suicide

Draven Rodriguez, a senior at Schenectady High School in New York, whose proposed yearbook photo of him, his cat, and lasers was widely celebrated across the Internet this fall, died on Thursday at the age of 17. The Times Union reports that the cause of death was suicide.

Rodriguez was born on October 6, 1997. "He made friends wherever he went," Rodriguez's father, Jonathan Stewart, told the Times Union. "He had friends all over the country—people he'd met at youth-leadership conferences, online, just around town."

"He wasn't trying to stir things up with it," Stewart said of his son's viral photo. "He honestly just wanted a silly photo because he had a great sense of humor."

Stewart told the Times Union that he believes the photo will still be included in the yearbook.

http://m.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/Suicide-claims-shining-student-6093034.php

Man that sucks, he had his whole life ahead of him. Such a shame

 

[Teelie]

It's weird indeed. There is no mention of anything that might have prompted him to do so but when people commit suicide it isn't always apparent why. Being 17 though, with all the pressures of that age might have been too much for him to handle.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

It's always sad when such a young person does that, life gets so much better once you're out of high school

 

[Octoberist]

Thats' awful news. Poor kid.

 

[squeekness]

Maybe he was gay and got bullied a lot. Kids can be so mean.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Police Dog Kicked Off Force for Biting Dunkin' Donuts Employee

A K9 cop in Florida was stripped of his badge this week after biting an employee in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, the New York Daily News reports.

According to The South Florida Sun Sentinel, 4-year-old Renzo jumped from the window of a parked patrol car on Feb. 11, charging at two of his human colleagues before finding the donut worker and clamping down on his calf.

"I have made the decision to retire K9 Renzo," Coconut Creek Police Chief Michael J. Mann told the paper on Wednesday.

Though off the force, Renzo will continue to live with partner Carl DiBlasi, WPLG reports.

Disturbingly, this was not the first time that Renzo, a one-year veteran of the department, had been accused of misconduct. Back in November, Renzo allegedly attacked a fellow officer while tracking a suspect, leaving the officer with "multiple puncture wounds."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-police-dog-bite-20150218-story.html

Damn dog sounds crazy

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Florida Man Dies Doing What He Loved: Fighting Batman

Sure, when it's your time to split you could die of a heart attack or stroke like everyone else—or you could go down swinging with a little chin music from the World's Greatest Detective, like Stephen Merrill did earlier this month.

"Stephen Merrill, 31, passes away February 12, 2015," read the Florida man's obituary in The Ledger, "due to a uppercut from Batman."

Lacking an official cause after Merrill's sudden death, the deceased's family says they improvised when writing his obituary. From WFTS:

"I made a joke," said [close friend Brandon] Moxam, "Say the cause of death was an 'uppercut from Batman.'"

Moxam said everyone in the room including Merrill's family, fiancée and close friends, all started laughing. According to Moxam, that's when Merrill's dad, Larry Merrill, said, "Yeah, the cause of death was an uppercut from Batman."

As a fan of comic books and absurd humor, Merrill's family believes he would have appreciated the announcement.

"He would have been honored to have died by an uppercut from Batman," said fiancée Stephanie Vella.

http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/w...ary-lists-cause-of-death-uppercut-from-batman

Awesome way to go out, rock on dude! I was also born in Winter Haven FL

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Yup, the President Can Mass-Message Everyone in the Country Any Time

The President of the United States can mass-message the entire phone-carrying nation at the same time whenever he deems it necessary, as a Wall Street Journal video reminded us today.

Unless you're carrying around a very old device, your phone has a specified capability* that makes sure official POTUS messages can always go through, no matter what. Phone manufacturers are required to include technology to enable these communications in devices, due an extension of the Emergency Alert Network enacted in 2012 that allows the president to get in contact with anyone, anywhere in the US, whenever it's necessary.

The emergency system allows phones to receive presidentail emergency alerts when they enter a specific geographic area. Technically, it's not actually a text. (So you'll never see Sent From my BlackBerry on emergency warnings from the president.) It's a specialized message form developed for emergencies.

These warnings have a unique vibration and sound alert, and they're sent to any phone within a geographic radius of a cell tower. Unlike Amber Alerts and weather emergency alerts, there is no way to opt out of the presidential text. It's compulsory.

Oddly enough, if you do get a presidential emergency alert and you're on the phone, it won't show up until after you've finished your conversation. I guess the apocalypse can wait?

http://www.wsj.com/video/here-a-thi...ges/A8BA9216-EB86-4919-ACBF-A76D5F2A4A3F.html

I think we all kind of figured he could do that but it's weird to know for sure he can haha

 

[Teelie]

Police Dog Kicked Off Force for Biting Dunkin' Donuts Employee

Spoiler

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-police-dog-bite-20150218-story.html

Damn dog sounds crazy

And sadly had this not been a police dog they would have demanded he be put down.

Florida Man Dies Doing What He Loved: Fighting Batman

Spoiler

http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/w...ary-lists-cause-of-death-uppercut-from-batman

Awesome way to go out, rock on dude! I was also born in Winter Haven FL

If there is ever a way to go out in style, this would be one of them.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Drug-Resistant Malaria Is On The Verge Of Spreading Into India

In Southeast Asia, the malaria parasite has been steadily building resistance to the drug that's used to treat it. This scary news, but even worse: the resistance is on the verge of spreading into densely populated India.

This data comes from a new study in infectious diseases publication the Lancet. According to the BBC, malaria kills about 584,000 people a year, down almost fifty percent from the number of deaths in 2000. Such is the power of drug artemisinin, but its effectiveness is weakening as resistance grows in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar (Burma), including a region that's just 15 miles from India.

The BBC notes that this type of crisis has happened before ... and when it did, it spread into other regions of the world:

Chloroquine probably saved hundreds of millions of lives, but resistance was discovered in 1957 around the border between Cambodia and Thailand. Resistance spread around the world and reached Africa 17 years later.

There is no evidence of artemisinin resistance in Africa yet, although there is concern that history is about to repeat itself with deadly consequences.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(15)70032-0/abstract

Well that sucks

 

[squeekness]

Viruses evolve,

 

[KevanG]

Life finds a way?

 

[squeekness]

Can't fool Mother Nature, lol.

 

[TX85]

"Fool me once,Shame on you. Fool me twice,Shame on me"

 

[Teelie]

I read about this a few months ago about why it is happening. The short answer is that those are taking the drugs in the Cambodia/Thailand area don't finish their treatment (sound familar?) because they feel fine and that they don't need to finish it so the parasites become drug resistent. There is a new and promising treatment but it's still a long ways off from becoming a replacement to existing ones.

 

[Godzilla2000]

Speaking of weird...anyone else wondering about John Travolta's sanity? It doesn't seem like Scientology has been doing anything to cure him of his odd behavior.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

That's because he's too worried about them blackmailing him for being gay

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The Enemy Has Been Living With Us the Whole Time and It's Gerbils

For centuries, mankind has lived in harmony with the gerbil, welcoming it into our homes, allowing it run inside our smallest wheels, and encouraging it to raise our human children as it saw fit with little to no outside interference. Now, a new study has found that gerbils have been trying to kill us for 700 years.

Treachery.

According to a paper examining possible climate-related causes of the Black Death, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, weather conditions in Europe throughout the pandemic would not have supported a perpetual replenishing of the writhing, screaming ''rat reservoir" traditionally blamed for spreading the disease (through fleas).

Betrayal.

In Asia, however, wet springs followed by warm summers could have led to a series of gerbil population booms. As temperatures (and, therefore, gerbil populations) dropped, the rodents' fleas would have needed to find new hosts, such as the idiot humans who allowed gerbils to exist with wanton abandon on Earth. (The paper suggests the gerbils could have passed their fleas to camels, which could have passed them to humans on trade routes, who could have passed them to other humans in Europe's harbor cities.)

Being very rude.

Here's how one of the paper's authors, University of Oslo Professor Nils Christian Stenseth, summarized it to the BBC:

"We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria shows up in harbour cities in Europe and then spreads across the continent."

As the Washington Post points out, this is not the first time rats have been exonerated in the court of public opinion; last year researchers claimed to have uncovered evidence the plague was airborne.

In light of the study's preliminary findings, perhaps Europe's rats will at long last take their rightful place alongside the Colosseum, Madame Tussauds™ London, and Viking river cruises, as one of the Continent's premier cultural attractions.

If you own a gerbil, go up to it now and whisper to it:

"You are evil. You are bad."

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31588671

Those squeaky little bastards

 

[squeekness]

I had two gerbil sisters. They were both quite sweet. They must have had me fooled.

 

[Victarion]

Which is both meaningless and probably misleading. Pesticide can be something as simple as borax or something more dangerous like DDT.

When you drink alcohol your liver breaks it down into something used in paint thinner. That doesn't make it paint thinner.

I would assume it'd be one harmful to your health since he bothered to mention it.

 

[Teelie]

Still meaningless because artificial sweetners have a bad reputation and unproven, unscientific, unreliable hearsay often goes around as factual and professors are hardly immune to believing and spreading misinformation. Nor does it mean the "more or less a pesticide" is actually dangerous to humans.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Dude Mixes $475 Worth of Soft Drinks and Then Barfs

YouTuber Hajime spent 56,365 yen (US$475), buying every kind of non-alcoholic drink his local convenience store sold. Then, he mixed them together to make "infinity coffee." Oh dear.

As pointed out by Twitter user Tim Hornyak, Hajime's video shows the huge collection of beverages amassed. There were milk drinks, various types of canned coffee, soda, fruit juices, yogurt drinks, energy drinks—you name it. He bought one of everything the store carried, save for booze.

Hajime points out that he bought all the drinks late at night when the convenience store wasn't crowded so as not to disturb other customers during the day.

[YT]XVs99DRupfk[/YT]

That is crazy haha